He may have lived in
the household of Sir Thomas Smythe from 1559 until 1562. Because his
father died when he was a minor, the new Earl became a royal ward. The wardship
system involved his lands being used by the crown for its own profit, although
ostensibly to the ward’s benefit. He was installed at Sir William
Cecil house on 3 Sep.

Edward Manners,
the young Earl of Rutland, having just lost his father, was now, like Oxford,
a Ward of the Crown, and so was sent to live with Cecil
who would see to the completion of his education. A letter from Cecil to the Countess
of Rutland establishes his move to join Cecil
as taking place in Jan 1564 where he was to meet Oxford at Hitcham near Burnham.
A year older than Oxford, Rutland’s
and Oxford’s fathers had been friends, Rutland’s
mother having married his father at the same ceremony in which Oxford’s
father married her sister, both daughters of Ralph
Neville, Earl of Westmorland. For the first time in
his life, the brotherless Oxford, now thirteen, had a companion of his own age
and, what may have been more important in some ways, his own rank.

Margery,Oxford's mother,remarried to Charles Tyrrell by 1566.
Oxford was on friendly terms with Tyrrell, as revealed
by Tyrrell's will. Oxford had given him a black horse, and in his will
Tyrrell granted him the return of his horse.

He received legal training at Gray's Inn
after having attended Queen's College, Cambridge, and was awarded Master of Arts
degrees by Oxford and Cambridge universities.

Thomas Twyne
summed up the sense of Oxford's special distinction by describing him as
"...beynge, as yet, but in your flower, and tender age, and generally hoped,
and accompted of in time, to become the cheefest stay of this your commonwelth"

,

while Sir George Buc recalled hearing "...four grave and... honorable
persons (who knew this erl...) say and affirm he was much more like... to acquir
a new erldome then to wast & lose an old erldom...".

On 23
Jul 1567, while practicing fencing with Edward Baynam, a tailor, in the
backyard of Cecil's house in the Strand, the seventeen-year-old
Oxford killed an
unarmed undercook named Thomas Brincknell with a thrust to the thigh. A packed
jury instructed by Cecil found that
Brincknell had caused his own death by
wilfully hurling himself on Oxford's rapier. Condemned as a suicide, Brincknell
was denied Christian burial, his pregnant widow Agnes and three-year-old son
Quyntyn stripped of their assets and abandoned to her relatives and the parish
church. Thus logic and justice died that a hot-tempered young Earl might walk
free.

Here
Oxford learned a lesson which was to last the next thirty years of his life: he
could commit no crime so vile that Cecil - soon to become the powerful Lord
Burghley - would not personally forgive and persuade others to forget.

In 1569,
at the age of nineteen, Oxford thanked Cecil for his good offices:

"For the
which althothe I haue fownd yow to
not account of late of me as in time tofore yet not wythstandinge that strangnes
yow shall se at last in me that I will aknowlege and not be vngratfull
vnto yow for them and not to deserue so ill a thowght in yow that they were ill
bestowed in me. But at this present desiringe yow yf I haue done any thinge
amise that I haue merited yowre offence imput
to my yong yeares and lak of experience to know my friendes"

This was
only the first of many times that Oxford would confess his misconduct but put
the blame on his friends.

By 1569, Sir William
had bethroted his thirteen-year-old daughter, Anne, to Phillip Sidney. But he could not
arrive to a financial agreement with the father of
Phillip, Sir Henry Sidney.
By the summer of 1571, Cecil
(now Lord Burghley) embarked on a new project. In a letter sent to Paris to the
young Earl of Rutland,
who also had hopes of becoming his son-in-law, Cecil broke the news that
Anne was bethroted to the Earl of Oxford.
Burghley persuaded himself that 'there is much more in him of
understanding than any stranger to him would think'. This was a mistaken
judgement. Sir William
had allowed his normal caution and integrity to be overruled by admiration for
his ward's high rank. On 19 Dec 1571, at the age of twenty-one,
Lord Edward regained control of his estates and married Anne
Cecil. Contemporary comments on Anne Cecil's marriage suggest that
she took some initiative, irresistibly beguiled by the glittering propect of
becoming the Countess of that handsome and rich Earl; and that her doting
father was persuaded to let her have what she wanted. Oxford soon began sleeping in other beds, and Anne became pregnant in
Oct 1574, only by her personal intervention in the household arrangements at
Hampton Court - in effect, giving Oxford no option but to spend the night in her
bedchamber.

On 25
Mar 1573 Oxford's servant George Brown killed George Sanders, a London
merchant, on Shooter's Hill near Greenwich, and mortally wounded John Bean. The
disclosure of Brown's prior romantic entanglement with Sanders' wife led to a
total of four executions by hanging. Oxford's half-uncle Arthur Golding quickly
published a sanitized account of what was England's most notorious murder since
1551. Both incidents earned a place in Holinshed's Chronicle and subsequently on the London stage, the 1551 murder as
Arden
of Feversham (1592), the 1573 murder as A
Warning for Fair Women (1599).

On 20
May three more of Oxford's men, Danye Wylkyns, John Hannam, and Maurice Dennis
alias Deny the Frenchman, attacked two of Burghley's men with muskets near
Gravesend in Kent.

De Vere was, in his earlier years, a favourite at court, where he seems
to have mostly lived when young. At 25, he undertook a tour of France, Germany
and Italy in 1575 and was abroad for some sixteen months. The Earl flirted with
Catholicism but in late 1580 he denounced a group of Catholic friends to the
Queen, accusing them of treasonous activities and asking her mercy for his own,
now repudiated, Catholicism.

In 1574
Oxford bolted to the Low Countries. Returning under duress, he managed to
persuade Queen Elizabeth to let him travel to more southern climes. In 1575
Oxford visited Italy, where he spent over £4000, and wallowed in sexual infamy.

Oxford spent approximately ten months, from May
1575 to Mar 1576, in Italy, making Venice his base of operations. Sir Henry
Wotton reported in
1617 that Oxford had built himself a house while in Venice. Oxford
was accompanied on his journey to Italy by Nathaniel Baxter, who in 1606,
two years after Oxford's death, published a
poem, entitled 'Sidney's Ouriana', in which he
reported, from personal knowledge, that Oxford had led a life of
"infamie" in Venice, from which he was recalled by a higher power. While in Venice,
Oxford consorted with a Venetian courtesan named Virginia
Padoana, a prostitute whose identity is confirmed by contemporary Venetian
legal documents.

Oxford's association with Virginia Padoana
is recorded in a letter written by Sir Stephen Powle to John
Chamberlain, 21 Sep 1587.

'... Yf to
be well neighboured be no smalle parte of happines I may repute my self highly
fortunate: for I am lodged emongst a great nomber of Signoraes. Isabella
Bellochia in the next howse on my right hand: And Virginia Padoana, that
honoreth all our nation for my Lord of Oxfords sake, is my neighbour on the
lefte side: Ouer my head hath Lodovica Gonzaga the Frenche kinges m{ist}ris her
howse: you thinck it peraduenture preposterous in Architecture to haue hir lye
ouer me. I am sorry for it, but I can not remedye it nowe: Pesarina w{i}th hir
sweet entertainment & braue discoorse is not 2 Canalls of[f]. Ancilla (Mr
Hattons handmayde) is in the next Campo: Paulina Gonzaga is not farre of[f].
Prudencia Romana with hir courtly trayne of frenche gentlemen euery nighte goeth
a spasso by my Pergalo. As for Imperia Romana hir date is out
w{hi}ch florished in your tyme. I must of force be well hallowed emongst so many
Saints. But in troath I am a frayde they doe condemne me of heresye, for
settinge vp so fewe tapers on their high Altars...'

Oxford also consorted with a sixteen-year-old Venetian choirboy named
Orazio
Cogno. Oxford brought Orazio back to London with him, where he remained with
Oxford for approximately one year before returning to Venice. In 1580-81
Oxford
was accused of pederasty with Orazio, with another Italian boy named Rocco, and
with other boys as well.Reports were abroad that two noble gentlemen from Polonia had been
killed in Padua, and that the blame was being laid on 'Gentiluomini Inglesi'; these reports, however, were not to be
credited.

On 24 Sep 1575, Oxford himself reported to Burghley that he had
just returned to Venice, where he was experiencing a fever which had hindered
his travel. He wrote of Italy, "I am glad I haue sene it", which
implies that he had travelled more or less extensively over the summer. He had
sent one of his servants back to England.
Moreover, one Luke Atslow, who had been his servant, had gone over to the Roman
church. On 3
Jan 1576 Oxford wrote Burghley
from Siena. On 23
Mar Benedetto Spinola informed Burghley that he had received a letter from his
brother (Pasquino) at Venice, dated 26 Feb, reporting that Oxford would
travel home by way of Lyons, and would set out from Venice after Carnival. On 21
Mar Valentine Dale wrote from Paris that Oxford had arrived there. On 31
Mar Francis Peyto wrote Burghley from Milan stating that
Oxford had passed by
that way. The trophies he
brought with him to England in Apr 1576 included a pair of silk gloves for the
Queen, the choirboy, and syphilis.

Oxford
rejected his wife on trumped up charges and refused to live with her for a
period of more than five years.

He denied paternity of the nine-month-old daughter he earlier acknowledged.
Abandoning his wife and daughter to Burghley's care, he set up household with
his choirboy in Broadstreet.
The marriage, although it
produced three surviving daughters, was not happy; Anne died in 1588.
Three of the remaining daughters, Elizabeth,
Bridget and
Susan, would marry into the
nobility, the latter to the Earl of Montgomery, one of two noblemen to whom
William Shakespeare's First Folio was dedicated.

Throughout the 70's and 80's the Earl often requested military duty,
yet he never gained the command of any sizable body of troops, nor was he
actively engaged aside from a month or two at the time of the
Northern Rebellion, an equally
brief service in the Low Countries in 1585.

Between 1575 and 1586, Oxford divested him-self of most of his lands so
that, as early as 1583,

was describing the Earl as practically bankrupt, with a household staff
reduced to only four liveried servants.

He was never entrusted with a diplomatic mission, entertainment of
foreign dignitaries, nor office at court or in the government at large. His sole
distinction in affairs of the realm was his hereditary post as
Lord Great
Chamberlain, an office with very real if ceremonial duties, which traditionally
included his presence at court during the five great feasts of the year,
specific functions at a coronation or the creation of peers, attendance upon the
sovereign in processions to Parliament, and jurisdiction over Westminster Hall
at the time of a coronation, trial of peers, "or any public
solemnity"

.

Ironically, Oxford's claim to this office was a fraudulent one. His
grandfather held the Chamberlainship as a grant from the Crown which expired
upon his death. Edward's father,
John, sixteenth Earl of Oxford, claimed the office at the time of

's coronation
and, since there was no counterclaim, enjoyed the title by default, as did the
Seventeenth Earl. At the coronation of Edward VI,
however, the Earl of Warwick had officiated
as Lord Great Chamberlain, an honor not even sought by a De Vere on that
occasion.

In Jul
1577 William Weekes murdered William Sankey, a former servant of
Oxford's, and
was subsequently hanged for the crime. Oxford's confidante Henry Howard called
it a contract murder for which Oxford paid £100. In late Aug 1579 Oxford pulled rank
on Sir Phillip Sidney at the
Greenwich tennis court. According to Fulke Greville’s account of the story,
the young Earl appeared upon the court while
Sidney was at play and commanded him to leave.
Sidney answered provokingly, Greville says, whereupon
Oxford grew angry and, before the onlooking French marriage-commissioners,
denounced him 'by the name of Puppy'.
Sidney asked him to repeat it, and he did, this time more loudly,
upon which Sidney gave him
the lie direct. Then, after a moment’s silence,
Sidney and his friends strode from the court. Having waited a day in
vain for Oxford’s challenge,
Sidney sent the Earl a reminder of honour’s obligations, and
Oxford, thus jostled, responded in honour. Queen Elizabeth placed Oxford under house arrest from 29 Jan to 11 Feb 1580 for sending
Sidney
a written challenge.

Oxford, though he
was
Lord Burghley’s son-in-law, was suspected of being secretly a
Catholic. The group of
Catholic courtiers included
the Lords Windsor and Compton, the Lords
Charles
and Thomas Howard, George Gifford,
Francis Southwell, Henry Noel, Arthur Gorges,
William Tresham, and William Cornwallis, among others, most of them practising
Roman Catholics, as well as others who came less often to Court, like the Earls
of Northumberland and
Southampton, Thomas Lord Paget, and
Phillip Howard, the
Duke of Norfolk’s son and heir.
The Oxford-Howard circle reached an apogee of sorts in the summer of 1579,
when Simier had so won the Queen,
Anjou was making his first visit into the realm.

The tennis court
quarrel itself was symptomatic of the factional tension between these Catholics,
who were solidly allied to
Burghley’s and Thomas
Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex’s support of the Duke of Anjou’s
marriage suit to the Queen,
and

was in disgrace following the revelation of his secret marriage to Lady Essex. When the French marriage
negotiations finally fell apart the Catholic group at Court became a sinking
ship. Perhaps because of their very isolation and vulnerability, drifted into
more and more questionable intrigues, chiefly in aid of the Queen of Scots but involving also the
Spanish Ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza.
Over Christmas 1580, however, Oxford fell out with his colleagues and was
induced to join the

’s instance,
on 16 Dec 1580 Oxford presented allegations to
the Queen charging his kinsmen with various treasons. Howard,
Arundell, and
Francis Southwell were promptly arrested. Oxford was also detained, and
altogether the business which dragged on for some time, became a sordid round of
wild accusations in all directions.

A list of
charges to be made against Oxford, found in Lord Henry’s hand, cites:

'...His practise to murder Sidney in his
bedde and to scape by barge, with calivers ready for the purpose...'

And from Arundell:

'...His savage and inhumayn practice at
Grenewidge to make awaye Phillipe Sidneye...'

De
Vere's tendency toward violence erupted at the age of seventeen when he
killed

Thomas Brincknell

. Oxford so vehemently opposed the betrothal of his sister,
Mary, to Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby, that Bertie feared for his life, and
the Earl not only quarreled with

, Oxford was noticeably disadvantaged by what
Gilbert Talbot termed his
"fyckle hed"

,

a phrase
which was to prove oracular.

In
1580-81, in letters directed to members of the Privy Council, Henry Howard and
Charles Arundell accused Oxford of numerous crimes: murder,
necromancy, athiesm, lying, drunkenness, and sedition, and included multiple
instances of pederasty. Having sodomized an Italian servant of his named
Auratio or Horatio; they reported that the boy had left Oxford's employ without
Oxford's permission, citing sexual abuse as his reason.

The
identity of this Italian servant and many details of his life with Oxford are
verified by a deposition which he gave to the Inquisition on 27 Aug 1577,
shortly after his return to Venice. He was then seventeen, which means that when
Oxford picked him up in early 1576, he was fifteen or sixteen.

The
deposition reveals that the servant's full name was Orazio Cogno.
"Millort de Voxfor", who attended the Greek Church in Venice (not a
Greek Orthodox church, but rather a church known as a haven of unorthodoxy),
first noticed Orazio singing at the church of S. Maria Formosa. Orazio consulted
his father (Francisco Cogno) and his mother about the Earl's subsequent
invitation to accompany him back to England, and they advised him to accept.
Orazio moved into Oxford's house in Venice on "Zuoba Grassa", the
Thursday before the beginning of Lent, which in 1576 fell on 1 Mar; the party
left Venice for England on the following "luni de carneval", or Monday
before Ash Wednesday, that is, on 5 Mar.

Orazio
spent 11 months in England, presumably from Apr 1576 to Mar (or perhaps only
Feb) 1577, living in Oxford's house in London "per Paggio" (as a
page). Since Oxford let everyone in his household live as he wished, Orazio could live as a Catholic, attending
mass "in the houses of the Ambassadors of Franceand of Portugal".

In
Venice and on the outbound journey through Italy and France, Oxford's entourage
ate fish on Catholic fast days. In England, Oxford and his household ate meat on
fast days, but Orazio was allowed to eat fish, as were 2 other servants in the
household who were Catholics. According to Orazio, Oxford "does not live
as a Catholic".

Although
Orazio served Oxford officially as a page, he was by profession a musician. On
one occasion he sang before Queen Elizabeth, who urged him to convert to the
reformed religion. In London he made the acquaintance of "Ambroso da
Venetia... che e musicho della Regina de ingelterra" (who is a
musician to the Queen), and with five brothers from Venice who were "musici
della Regina et fano flauti et viole" - evidently members of the extensive
Bassano family.

Orazio
was being interrogated on suspicion of heresy; the question of sodomy did not
arise during the trial. Nevertheless, the general circumstances of Orazio's
residence in Oxford's house during Oxford's complete separation from his wife,
Anne Cecil, are fully compatible with the testimony of Henry Howard and Charles
Arundell.

In one
particular the fit is exact. Orazio was asked by the inquisitors if he
had licence to leave. Orazio replied: "No; he would not have allowed me to leave". This
statement correlates perfectly with the testimony of Howard and Arundell that
Orazio had left Oxford's employ without Oxford's permission, citing sexual abuse
as his reason. Oxford may have had a psychological need, but he had no legal
right to deny Orazio permission to leave his employ at any time.

In Arundell’s 'Declaration of the
Earell of Oxfordes detestable vices, and unpure life', Walter Raleigh
is listed along with many of these men as able to confirm having heard Oxford’s
gross self-gratulant lying, 'with divers other Ientillmen that hathe accompanid
him'; they were often 'driven to rise from his table laugheinge'. Howard, Arundell, Southwell, and
Raleigh were dining in Oxford’s chambers
at Greenwich Palace when the Earl drunkenly insisted that the French had a
tradition of 'crownenge none but cockscomes'. These four and Lord
Windsor were present when Oxford asserted that Joseph was a wittol and the
Blessed Virgin a whore, 'and Mr. Harrye Noell will saye that Rawlie told it him'; and again,
Raleigh was present at Richmond when
Oxford recited a whole
catalogue of blasphemies.

'...Lastlie yf him selfe lie not, he
hathe practisid with a man of his one that nowe serves in Ireland to kill
Rawlie when ever he goes[?] to any skirmishe, and this he termes a brave
vendetta, and of this intent of his I have advertised Rawlie...'

Another document in Arundell’s hand
elaborates further by citing Oxford’s 'practice with certayne soldiers to kill
Dennye, Rawlie, and [John] Cheke in Ireland' and 'his laying wayte for Rawlies
life before his goinge into Ireland'. When accused by
Oxford of having had intelligence from the Irish rebels, Arundell replied that
he had received thence no letters save 'in causes of frinshippe' from the
Earl
of Ormonde (another great friend of the Howard circle whenever he was in
England) and from Raleigh. Arundell admitted to having
heard of Oxford’s silly boast that Anjou had offered him ten thousand crowns a
year to come to France; 'other knoledge have I none but that Rawlie told me,
and what my answer was Rawlie [can] testefie'. From these
documents and others like them emerges a picture of a set of boon companions who
had passed whole days in conversation at Richmond and Hampton Court, in Oxford’s
chambers at Greenwich and Whitehall, in his house in Bread Street, and in the
Horsehead in Cheapside, but had now fallen to recriminations.

Oxford was retained under house arrest for a short time and, following the birth to Anne
Vavasour of an illegitimate child fathered by him on

21 Mar

1581 (Sir Edward
Vere), was briefly in the Tower of London.

He
had seduced the beautiful Anne Vavasour, and "on Tuesday at night Anne
Vavasour was brought to bed of a son in the maidens' chamber. The E. of Oxeford
is avowed to be the father" (Letter of Walsingham, 23 Mar 1580/1, Hist. MSS. Com., Hastings MSS, vol. ii, p. 29). The
Earl was under
restraint
for some weeks and not admitted to Court until Jun 1583. Oxford and his
followers reaped the fruits of this scandal in a duel, and a series of frequent
and fatal
brawls lasting over several years.

The birth of this child led to a
long-running feud with Sir Thomas Knyvett, uncle of Anne
Vavasour, which
resulted in the deaths of three followers of De Vere and Knyvett as well as
injury to both men.

The infant son was buried on 9 May 1583.

During the early 1580s it is likely that the Earl lived
mainly at one of his Essex country houses, Wivenhoe, but this was sold in 1584.
After this it is probable that he followed the court again and passed some time
in his one remaining London house.

Anne Vavasour

c. 1605Collection of the Armourers and Brasiers of the
City of London

Martin Frobisher reported in 1581 that
Oxford
was interested in buying the ship Edward Bonaventure; the asking price
was £1,800; Oxford's offer of £1,500 was apparently rejected.

Evidence of De Vere's lifelong
interest in learning were the numerous contemporary tributes to his patronage.
Among the 33 works dedicated to the Earl, six deal with religion and philosophy,
two with music and three with medicine, but the focus of his patronage was
literary, for 13 of the books presented to him were original or translated works
of literature. Authors dedicating works to De Vere include Edmund Spenser,
Arthur Golding, Robert Greene, John Hester, John Brooke,
John Lyly, Anthony
Munday, and Thomas Churchyard, the latter three writers all having been employed
by De Vere for various periods of time. Another of
his secretaries was the English scientist, Nicholas Hill.

Edward De Vere, seventeen
Earl
of Oxford

Collection of His Grace, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, KT

His extensive patronage and possible mismanagement
of estates led to the sale of all his inherited lands, inhibiting the
formation of a local power base and possibly precluding high office.

's
help,
Oxford secured a royal grant of £1000 per annum to repair his squandered
fortune.

Its unusual form, an annuity payable in
quarterly installments, shows that it was designed to solve an unusual
problem, the preservation of a necessary state figure whose irresponsibility
precluded a grant which might be farmed out, commuted, or sold.

saved the honor of
the English nobility by retrospectively fabricating a heroic role for Oxford,
but his peer support at the annual Order of the Garter elections plummetted to
zero, and remained at zero while Elizabeth drew breath.

Oxford
spent his last sixteen years scrounging for money. He applied for the right
to gauge vessels for beer and ale; for the exclusive right to import fruits,
oils, and wools; for the governorship of the Isle of Jersey and the
presidency of Wales; and, from 1595 to 1599, for the tin monopoly in Devon
and Cornwall. In the early 1590s, he repaired his fortunes by marrying the
wealthy Elizabeth Trentham, one of the

’s maids of honour. Their
only child, Henry, heir to the earldom, was born in 1592.

Despite an endless stream of begging letters to
Burghley and his son
Robert,
including a desperate request in 1591 to trade in his £1000 annuity for a
one-time settlement of £5000, Oxford received no further support from Elizabeth.
Finally, under James and shortly before his death, Oxford
received his first vote for the Order of the Garter since before the
Armada.

He died

on 24

Jun 1604, probably from plague, at King’s
Place in Hackney, located in the London suburb of Stratford. He left no will and
is presumed buried in St Augustine’s church in the same parish. Contemporary
testimony that he may be buried elsewhere is provided by Percival Golding, the youngest son of Arthur Golding, the uncle of
De Vere. Golding wrote twenty years after De Vere's death that the
17th Earl
"died at his house at Hackney in the month of Jun 1604 and lies buried at
Westminster [Abbey]"

.

Much as
Oxford's rash, unpredictable nature minimized his success in the world of
practical affairs, he deserves recognition not only as a poet but as a nobleman
with extraordinary intellectual interests and commitments. Sir George Buc's
awareness of De Vere's financial ruin did not prevent him from characterizing
the Earl as 'a magnificent and a very learned and religious man'.

Both William Webbe (A Discourse
of English Poetrie, 1586) and George Puttenham (The Arte of English Poetrie,
1589) ranked him first among

's courtier poets, and some two dozen
poems are signed or ascribed to De Vere in manuscript or published form.
De
Vere's poetry first appeared in the 1576 publication of The Paradise of Dainty
Devices, then in The Arte of English Poetrie (1589), The Phoenix Nest (1593),
England's Helicon (1600) and England's Parnassus (1600). In 1622, Henry Peacham
(The Complete Gentleman) would list De Vere as first among the poets of the
Elizabethan period.

De Vere was also active as a
dramatist at this time. Though none of his masques and plays survive, he wrote
plays of a quality to be cited by Francis Meres (Palladis Tamia, 1598) for
comedy and interlude, being praised by Meres as "the best among us for
comedy"

.

Oxford
took over the players of the Earl of Warwick in Mar 1580. When outraged law
students from the Inns of Court rioted at the Theater, Oxford's men replied with
such spirit that three of them landed in jail. Burghley then came to Oxford's
aid by recommending his company to the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge University.

Throughout the 1580s, De Vere
maintained a band of tumblers as well as two theater companies, Oxford's Boys
and Oxford's Men. The former company played at the Blackfriars Theater in
London, the lease of which Oxford purchased and transferred to playwright and
novelist John Lyly, his secretary for more than 15 years, and at Paul's Church,
until it was closed in 1590. Oxford's Men was a troupe of actors which mostly
toured the provinces. Oxford's company remained intact from 1580 until 1602, when it was
amalgamated with Worcester's men.